Can you set a due date in Reminders on Mountain Lion?

Thanks, aholtz. That's helpful to me and I didn't know that feature existed apart from speaking that with Siri on IOS. What I'd like, though, is simply to be able to assign tasks to a certain date (due date) without fooling with setting date/time reminders.

That does create a Reminder, but it doesn't set a Due Date.

Generally, people want to set a Reminder to warn of an impending deadline.

Sure it does. If you tell Siri to set a reminder to call Barney on August 9 it'll do that. The Due Date field exists but is hidden somehow. We just need Apple to give us the choice.

Whether that is actually the due date field or the reminder date field, I don't really know. It doesn't allow you to create a Task that has a Due date with a Reminder.

If you create a Reminder for several minutes in the past, then snooze the Reminder, you can view the Reminder and see that you now have a due date and a reminder date. However, mine stopped allowing me to see that. Worked for about 10 minutes while I wrote the post above, but now doesn't show the Due Date field at all.

Any idea where the raw data is stored for the Reminders?

Thanks for that tip.

I wouldn't bank on  doing much about it. I've been complaining about it vociferously throughout the beta testing, only to be told it 'works as expected'. Be sure to follow the feedback link that Barney gave earlier to add some weight to the argument!

One addition for your tutorial.

You can create a template reminder that has a due date set. Then, you can just copy and paste that reminder and use to create new ones. Obviously, only slightly less clunky than having to go to iCloud.com to do it.

Also, I was actually able to set a reminder on iCloud and the due date still appeared.

This trick is nice to know, because my trick of setting it to go off in the past doesn't work for me, anymore.

I have a number of tasks (now called Reminders) that were created in iCal before Mountain Lion was released. When I installed Mountain Lion, all of those tasks came into Reminders (the new app) with the Due Date field intact and visible. In those cases, the fields visible were:

Remind Me

On a Day

At a Location

Due Date

When I simply change the Due Date, the Reminder moves to whatever date I pick, just as it should. It is in creating new Reminders that this behavior changes because a Due Date field is not visible.

I don't want/need alarms going off for my tasks. All I need is to be able to create tasks with a specific due date. The time is irrelevant to me. That way, if I select, say, August 2, I have a complete list of all the tasks I have to do that day. It is this functionality that exists in the new Reminders only for tasks that were formed in the old iCal. All the new ones now require a day/time alarm although they, too, do appear on the appropriate date.

One other anomaly. If a new Reminder is formed in Mountain Lion, unless it has a Remind Me time of 12am it tends to not sync with iCloud and the Reminder apps on IOS on just one day. Instead, a Reminder might appear on the wrong day, usually the day before the Reminder is actually due. The solution is to either just have Due Dates as suggested above or to set the Remind Me time for 12am. Then they sync correctly, in my limited experiments with this problem.

Barney, how do you create the template to include the Due Date field? I can copy the Reminder but the fields revert to the two new ones when I paste it into a new Reminder.

Good tip, Barney. That works perfectly. Those of us who are just now starting to use Reminders can use my method for creating their first reminder that has both the alert and due date options, then from there just simply copy and paste new reminders. I tested it and was quite pleased. A real time saver.

Two things: 1. I can only copy/paste reminders in OS X, not in iOS; 2. It would be nice if Apple would just enable due dates in both operating systems by defalt so that none of us have to jump any hurdles to utilize the Reminders app's full functionality.

scribsac wrote:

It would be nice if Apple would just enable due dates in both operating systems by defalt so that none of us have to jump any hurdles to utilize the Reminders app's full functionality.

Absolutely. What's worse is that they even misleadingly advertise that due dates are one of the features you get with Reminders in Mountain Lion.

http://www.apple.com/osx/whats-new/features.html

This is a very good solution @Barney-15E. Since your template will have a date, if you create a "Templates" list, you can choose to put your "manufacured" reminder there (see below to "manufacture one") so it's easy to find with it's old expired due date and no reminder set. Then when you want to use it copy it, click on the due date in the mini calendar and paste it in, the due date will be set for that day at the template time.

"Manufacturing" your due date template:

1. Create a new reminder with the reminder time past (call it something like "due date template" - a notification will instantly pop up

2. On the notification, select "snooze" - reminders moves the "remind me" date and time to the "due" field

3. VERY IMPORTANT: uncheck the "remind me" box - if you select a reminder it will replace the due date (I think this is your mystery solved @Barney-15E)

4. Put the reminder in a list by itself (or with other ones if you like) then copy from that list, select a due date from the mini calendar, set your reminder if you choose.

Ditto: Apple, please give us back the due date...

Check that on the disappearing due field... is does seem to be a limited use option since after creating and snoozing the due field has disappeared. My apologies @Barney-15E...

Message was edited by: Ames Fowler

rkdav wrote:

Barney, how do you create the template to include the Due Date field? I can copy the Reminder but the fields revert to the two new ones when I paste it into a new Reminder.

When I first tried, it didn't appear that the whole reminder (entire field) was selected and it didn't work. I think that was because it just copied the text of the Reminder.

You have to make sure the entire field is selected when you copy.

And, like everything having to do with Reminders, I can't replicate the failure.

You have to select the entire RemInder not just the text. Click in the white space and the box around the reminder will change color slightly.

Oh I have that part working. What I was describing was that it had actually failed the first time I tried when I hypothesized this workaround. Now, I can't get it to fail. I was just responding to rkdav as it didn't work. Now that I've re-read the post, thanks to yours, I believe I understand why rkdav is failing.

Thanks to both Ames and Barney. I've got the whole thing copied now and usable as a workaround until Apple resolves this issue.